Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. We're off this week for fall break,
Speaker 1: but we have some horror related content from last year
Speaker 1: for you. This is going to be Trains of Terror
Speaker 1: Part one, originally published October first, twenty twenty four. There's
Speaker 1: all sorts of scary train related topics discussed within, So
Speaker 1: let's grab a ticket and all aboard. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio. Hey you welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And today is a thrilling
Speaker 2: occasion for us here on the podcast because this very
Speaker 2: episode is publishing on Tuesday, October first, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: which makes it the inaugural entry in our tradition month
Speaker 2: long celebration of Halloween. So longtime fans, you know what's
Speaker 2: going on, you know what's in store. But in case
Speaker 2: you're new to the show, the pitch is that every
Speaker 2: October on Stuff to Blow your Mind, we devote all
Speaker 2: of that month's core episodes two topics related to monsters, ghosts, demons, curses,
Speaker 2: and horror Halloween stuff, and also for our weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema episodes for the Fridays of this month, we're going
Speaker 2: to be looking at horror movies.
Speaker 1: That's right. October is the month when you can turn
Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your mind and find that we
Speaker 1: were doing horror and monster stuff one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: the time as opposed to our normal like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: thirty five to forty percent of the time.
Speaker 2: That's right, people have pointed out before. I mean, we're
Speaker 2: you know, we got monsters on the brain. That's kind
Speaker 2: of how we are. So throughout the year you'll get
Speaker 2: a smattering, but for October it's it's all we do.
Speaker 1: And I'm excited about the episode we're going to kick
Speaker 1: off here today. The series rikicking off here today because
Speaker 1: this is a topic we've been talking about doing for
Speaker 1: years now. This is well when we get around planning
Speaker 1: out our October episodes, this one's been on the list
Speaker 1: for a while and we're finally hopping aboard.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder why it took us this long. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's a particular reason. Just shook out that way.
Speaker 2: But today we're beginning a series on locomotive horror, the
Speaker 2: mini Shades of Menace and supernatural fright that we have
Speaker 2: projected onto trains. Now, this is a topic that's going
Speaker 2: to take us into a bunch of different realms of folklore, history, science,
Speaker 2: and technology. But I think the best place to begin
Speaker 2: here is to look at some famous examples of trains
Speaker 2: in horror fiction and rob If you don't mind, I
Speaker 2: want to kick things off with an example of a
Speaker 2: story that I just read in full for the first
Speaker 2: time this weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's have it, okay.
Speaker 2: So the story in question is a short tale of ghosts,
Speaker 2: spectral visions, and premonitions by Charles Dickens, and it's called
Speaker 2: The Signalman. This story was published in eighteen sixty six
Speaker 2: as part of a set of short stories by Dickens
Speaker 2: and a handful of other authors, with the collection as
Speaker 2: a whole called Mugby Junction. So there's sort of a
Speaker 2: locomotive and railroad theme running throughout. This collection was a
Speaker 2: special Christmas edition of a magazine that Dickens founded called
Speaker 2: All the Year Round. And I'm going to briefly summarize
Speaker 2: the story, including the ending, So as a warning, if
Speaker 2: you want to read it without having the ending spoiled,
Speaker 2: you could pause and do that. Now it's fairly short.
Speaker 2: It only takes like twenty minutes or so to read.
Speaker 2: The Signalman begins with an unnamed narrator who wanders to
Speaker 2: the edge of a huge trench in the earth around
Speaker 2: sunset one day, and at the bottom of this trench
Speaker 2: there is a railway line leading into a dark tunnel,
Speaker 2: and at the edge of the tunnel, beside the tracks
Speaker 2: there is a tiny box like signal house and the
Speaker 2: signalman who works it. So a bit of historical context
Speaker 2: that helps you understand the story better. In the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: signal operators were a crucial part of railroads. These were
Speaker 2: workers who had to stay at little houses beside the tracks,
Speaker 2: and they would be equipped with lights and colored flags
Speaker 2: and usually a telegraph line to relay information to and
Speaker 2: about passing trains, which meant that signalers were pivotal to
Speaker 2: railroad safety. They gave the trains information, they passed the
Speaker 2: information via flags or sometimes even shouted verbal signals. They
Speaker 2: passed information to oncoming engine drivers, and this could be
Speaker 2: information about the conditions of the tracks ahead, like is
Speaker 2: there an obstruction, a flood, some of their kind of problem,
Speaker 2: or about the movements of other trains, like was there
Speaker 2: a train stalled on the tracks ahead or somewhere it
Speaker 2: shouldn't be. And they also kept information about when trains
Speaker 2: passed to make sure everything was running on schedule and
Speaker 2: alert other stations and trains if there was some kind
Speaker 2: of danger or delay. They were also sometimes responsible for
Speaker 2: operating track switches to divert the course of a train
Speaker 2: there's a fork in the line. But because of the
Speaker 2: nature of their work, signal operators were sometimes characterized as
Speaker 2: kind of pitiable people. Like it was stressful work because
Speaker 2: the lives of many people were in their hands. If
Speaker 2: they made a mistake, it could lead to disaster. But
Speaker 2: it was also isolated, lonely work because they would be
Speaker 2: spending long shifts by themselves in remote and sometimes unpleasant
Speaker 2: locations along the rail lines. So anyway back to the story.
Speaker 2: The narrator comes to a deep cutting in the earth
Speaker 2: at the emergence of a rail tunnel, and he looks
Speaker 2: down into it and sees this tiny signal house and
Speaker 2: the man who works there standing at the door. Curious.
Speaker 2: The narrator calls out and says, Helloa, it's that one
Speaker 2: of those hellos that spelled halloa, or how you say that,
Speaker 2: do you say the oa? Or is that just oh hello,
Speaker 2: I die.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: It's like balbo helloa below there, He's trying to get
Speaker 2: the man's attention. The man at first seemed confused and
Speaker 2: even frightened, but then reluctantly invites the narrator down a
Speaker 2: hidden pathway to meet him. And here I'm going to
Speaker 2: read a descriptive passage to communicate the atmosphere of the story.
Speaker 2: The narrator says his post was in as solitary and
Speaker 2: dismal a place as I ever saw. On either side,
Speaker 2: a dripping, wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view
Speaker 2: but a strip of sky. The perspective one way only
Speaker 2: a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon, the shorter perspective
Speaker 2: in the other direction, terminating in a gloomy red light,
Speaker 2: and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose
Speaker 2: massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing and forbidding air.
Speaker 2: So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot
Speaker 2: that it had an earthy, deadly smell, and so much
Speaker 2: cold wind rushed through it that it struck chill to
Speaker 2: me as if I had left the natural world.
Speaker 1: Ooh, that is nice.
Speaker 2: Anyway, the narrator notices that the signal man is acting weird.
Speaker 2: He's preoccupied, even a bit haunted, And they eventually get
Speaker 2: to know one another and become familiar, and after some
Speaker 2: time has passed between them, the signalman confesses what it
Speaker 2: is that's troubling him. At several times past, the signalman
Speaker 2: has had visions of a man in the night, posed
Speaker 2: against the red light, the danger light at the mouth
Speaker 2: of the tunnel. The figure stands with one arm raised up,
Speaker 2: waving violently, and the other arm thrown over his eyes
Speaker 2: like a blindfold. And when the signalman sees the figure,
Speaker 2: he hears a voice calling out, saying Helloa below there,
Speaker 2: look out, And then as suddenly as it appeared, the
Speaker 2: figure vanishes into darkness. And twice before at the time
Speaker 2: of the story, the signalman has seen this shadow man
Speaker 2: in the red light and heard the voice, and then
Speaker 2: immediately after those visions, disaster has fallen somewhere nearby on
Speaker 2: the tracks. One time it was a terrible engine collision
Speaker 2: in which many people were killed. Another time it was
Speaker 2: the sudden and mysterious death of a young woman riding
Speaker 2: on board a passing train. And so now the signalman
Speaker 2: is not only haunted by this vision, but by what
Speaker 2: it means. When he sees it and when he hears
Speaker 2: the voice, he knows there will soon be a disaster,
Speaker 2: and he wants to telegraph the station so he can
Speaker 2: perhaps avert it. But he has no idea what the
Speaker 2: disaster will be, and he can't explain the reason he
Speaker 2: knows it's coming, so he can't give a warning that
Speaker 2: anybody will heed. So he's tortured with this terrible knowledge
Speaker 2: that he can't use to help anyone. Now the narrator
Speaker 2: is troubled by all this. He seems to believe that
Speaker 2: the man is suffering from a nervous condition, and the
Speaker 2: next day he plans to come back and find a
Speaker 2: way to convince the signalman to go see a doctor.
Speaker 2: But when the narrator arrives at the trench in the
Speaker 2: earth the next day, he instead finds a large gathering
Speaker 2: of railroad officials on site. Apparently the signalman was cut
Speaker 2: down by a train the night before. He was standing
Speaker 2: in the tracks as if in a trance. The engine
Speaker 2: driver saw him as the train was approaching and tried
Speaker 2: to call out to him to get him to move
Speaker 2: out of the way, and he was calling out halloa
Speaker 2: below there look out and waved one arm violently to
Speaker 2: get the signalman's attention. But at the last moment, the
Speaker 2: engine driver was terrified of what he was about to see,
Speaker 2: and so he threw his other arm over his face
Speaker 2: to cover his eyes.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I.
Speaker 2: Think it's a wonderfully chilling ending. Even now just telling
Speaker 2: it again, I got at a little bit of a
Speaker 2: shiver a goosebump there. Now you might think, because a
Speaker 2: lot of ghost stories, what they're really about is the ghost.
Speaker 2: And actually you could say that it's arguable whether or
Speaker 2: not this should be classified as a ghost story or
Speaker 2: whether it's actually a premonition story that just has a
Speaker 2: has a similar aesthetic reform to a ghost story. But
Speaker 2: you could argue that, yeah, maybe the setting is kind
Speaker 2: of incidental. What it's really about is the ghost and
Speaker 2: the human interaction. But I don't know. I think the
Speaker 2: railway setting is not incidental here. I think the setting
Speaker 2: along the tracks is actually quite thematically central. It matters
Speaker 2: that the signalman is a signalman, like what his job
Speaker 2: is is core to the anguish that he's suffering with
Speaker 2: this terrible knowledge, and the fear and the dread and
Speaker 2: the gloomy atmosphere and the danger are all centrally based
Speaker 2: on railroad technology. And you can tell and even that
Speaker 2: Dickens himself had strange, I would say, at best, ambivalent
Speaker 2: feelings about rail travel and its effects on the world.
Speaker 2: There's a different story in this same collection, Mugby Junction,
Speaker 2: where Dickens is writing about a character looking down at
Speaker 2: a railroad junction and says, but there were so many
Speaker 2: lines gazing down upon them from a bridge at the junction.
Speaker 2: It was as if the concentrating companies formed a great
Speaker 2: industrial exhibition of the works of extraordinary ground spiders that
Speaker 2: spun iron.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's nice anyway.
Speaker 2: All that to make the point that I think a
Speaker 2: lot of these horror stories that are about trains are
Speaker 2: not incidentally about trains. They're not just stories that could
Speaker 2: be set anywhere that just happened to be a setting
Speaker 2: the author liked. I think a lot of them really
Speaker 2: are in serious ways about trains and what trains mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And this is a really fascinating subject to
Speaker 1: get into, and I feel like I do have to
Speaker 1: like mention at the top of all this that I
Speaker 1: love trains. I enjoy riding on trains, subway or otherwise,
Speaker 1: bullet trains everywhere, ever, and I've really enjoyed trains. I
Speaker 1: live next to a train track, I've lived next to
Speaker 1: it for over a decade, and I still find reasons
Speaker 1: to enjoy watching the trains go by, or especially the
Speaker 1: trucks on the tracks and various maintenance equipment or special loads.
Speaker 1: Occasionally that occurs, and I get a kick out of that.
Speaker 1: Suffice to say, trains are very every day to me,
Speaker 1: and I like them. I don't inherently think they are creepy.
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, there is something about
Speaker 1: the train that fits so well, not only fits well
Speaker 1: within these stories, but serves as a great skeleton for
Speaker 1: these stories. And a lot of it comes down to
Speaker 1: ideas that the train itself there's something unnatural about it.
Speaker 1: There's something really almost a sense of future shock that's
Speaker 1: never gone away, you know. And also the idea that
Speaker 1: the train is a location is inherently unnatural, and there's
Speaker 1: something about it that is sort of inherently haunted. And
Speaker 1: there are different ways to approach this, and I was
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this, and I was looking up
Speaker 1: various short stories and works of horror and thinking about
Speaker 1: various movies as well that use train settings, and some
Speaker 1: of them are you know, you can find overt examples
Speaker 1: of like, Okay, this is a movie about a train
Speaker 1: with a killer on the train. You know it's you know,
Speaker 1: it is just a setting for murders. Plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of that. But one of the examples that I think
Speaker 1: came to my mind the most, and this is one
Speaker 1: that I remember watching an adaptation of it when I
Speaker 1: was younger. This comes from the works of Sarrothur Conan
Speaker 1: Doyle and a particular short story titled The Adventure of
Speaker 1: the Copper Beaches. This would have been an eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: two tale, and I vividly remember watching the Jeremy Brett
Speaker 1: Granada television adaptation of this when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: You can find this streaming, and you can get this
Speaker 1: on disc as well. These were all really accurate adaptations
Speaker 1: of the shlock Comb stories. But basically this does not
Speaker 1: involve a haunted train. There's not even a murder on
Speaker 1: the train or anything of that nature. It's just Holmes
Speaker 1: and Watson are taking the train into the countryside to
Speaker 1: look into particular crime. And at first Holmes is consumed
Speaker 1: by his newspaper much of the way you know, or
Speaker 1: today he'd be on his iPhone or something. But he
Speaker 1: finally puts his newspaper way and he begins to survey
Speaker 1: the scenery outside the window, and he makes a kind
Speaker 1: of terrifying observation. He goes on a bit of a
Speaker 1: rant multiple paragraphs that I can't I can't read all
Speaker 1: of it here, but I'm going to read essentially unabridged version. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Holmes says the following to Watson, you look at
Speaker 1: these scattered houses and you are impressed by their beauty.
Speaker 1: I look at them and the only thought which comes
Speaker 1: to me is a feeling of their isolation and of
Speaker 1: the impunity with which crime may be committed there. They
Speaker 1: always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson,
Speaker 1: founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys
Speaker 1: in London do not present a more dreadful record of
Speaker 1: sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside. The pressure
Speaker 1: of public opinion can do in the town what the
Speaker 1: law cannot accomplish. There is no lane, so vile that
Speaker 1: the scream of a tortured child or the thud of
Speaker 1: a drunkard's blow does not beget sympathy and indignation among
Speaker 1: the neighbors. And then the whole machinery of justice is
Speaker 1: ever so close that a word of complaint can set
Speaker 1: it going. And there is but a step between the
Speaker 1: crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses.
Speaker 1: Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness
Speaker 1: which may go on year in year out in such places,
Speaker 1: and none the wiser. It is the five miles of
Speaker 1: country which makes the danger.
Speaker 2: That's a very interesting paragraph because it strikes me as
Speaker 2: both containing some wisdom and truth but also representing a
Speaker 2: pathological way of thinking. You know, it's like, yeah, there
Speaker 2: is some correct observation there, but also it's just it
Speaker 2: reveals Holmes's way of looking at the world as just
Speaker 2: like a place of dangers and miseries. And you can
Speaker 2: sort of do an inventory of the potential for dangers
Speaker 2: and miseries by looking at any place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it definitely reveals something of Holmes's nature.
Speaker 1: And again it's the train itself is not creepy. Here
Speaker 1: in the adaptation, and in the book you get the
Speaker 1: very homes the insense of, oh, these are just gentlemen
Speaker 1: on a train, But then when you get this morbid observation,
Speaker 1: Ultimately it's about how the countryside is creepy and not
Speaker 1: even the city is creepy. But there's something about the
Speaker 1: train technology's role in this.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes, I would have no way of proving that
Speaker 2: that Arthur Conan Doyle was actually trying to make this
Speaker 2: particular point, but I would not be surprised if this
Speaker 2: kind of observation was actually a statement about the way
Speaker 2: a train changes the way you look at the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's about the vantage point that it provides,
Speaker 1: the broadening human travel abilities. It permits Holmes a chance
Speaker 1: to observe something terrifying about human nature and human civilization.
Speaker 1: And it's a scene that I think just got stuck
Speaker 1: in my head at an early age. So I literally
Speaker 1: think about the scene almost any time I'm on a train,
Speaker 1: certainly if it's a novel train and I get to
Speaker 1: look out at the countryside.
Speaker 2: Which, by the way, I love doing. Robert, I'm like you,
Speaker 2: I also very much love trains. I mostly have just
Speaker 2: positive feelings about them, So I did not pick this
Speaker 2: topic because I think trains are inherently creepy, but maybe
Speaker 2: because they're sort of cuddly to me. I wonder I'm
Speaker 2: interested in the way is that they might bring terrors
Speaker 2: to mind for many people, especially people in say the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but seriously, I'll be riding a train. Like
Speaker 1: even more recently, a few months back, I had to
Speaker 1: ride the Bullet train in Japan. Look out of the
Speaker 1: beautiful countryside, and yet here's Sherlock Holmes whispering my ear.
Speaker 1: They might be murdering in there, so thank you, Sherlock, but.
Speaker 2: They think of the horror is hidden beyond.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, Another tale that comes to mind concerning trains is
Speaker 1: the Ray Bradberry story The Town where No One Got Off,
Speaker 1: And I'm mostly familiar with this one from a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six adaptation on the Ray Bradberry Theater television show
Speaker 1: starring a young Jeff Goblin. Oh or you know, this
Speaker 1: was what the same year as The Fly, so you
Speaker 1: know young Jeff Goblin. I don't remember how old he
Speaker 1: would have been at this point in his career, but anyway,
Speaker 1: so this is another story where the train itself is
Speaker 1: not creepy, but there's something about the way it connects
Speaker 1: people in places that takes on a very sinister air.
Speaker 1: So in this story, we follow a man from the city,
Speaker 1: this is Jeff Goblum's character in the adaptation, who takes
Speaker 1: a train ride out into the countryside to confirm, according
Speaker 1: to him, his ideals about country living and his of
Speaker 1: course curiosity with this particular stop where nobody ever gets off.
Speaker 1: You know, what is it with this town? And you
Speaker 1: know this also ties into some general fascination with train travel.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, what is this stop? Who lives here?
Speaker 1: Who are these people? And he meets up and tags
Speaker 1: along with an old countryman during this journey. And there's
Speaker 1: a twist though, and I'm about to spoil it, so
Speaker 1: skip ahead, pause, and so forth if you don't want
Speaker 1: it to be spoiled. But the twist is that the
Speaker 1: city man has ventured out to the country to commit
Speaker 1: the perfect murder of a stranger, and the old man
Speaker 1: has lured him out to do the same, to commit
Speaker 1: the perfect murder of a city guy who has wandered
Speaker 1: into the country. And I'm going to read it just
Speaker 1: a quick quote here from the original rape Bradbury short story. Now,
Speaker 1: the darkness that had brought us together stood between the
Speaker 1: old man, the station, the town, the forest were lost
Speaker 1: in the night. For an hour, I stood in the
Speaker 1: roaring blast, staring back at all that darkness. Oh so
Speaker 1: this is a story that works in a number of ways,
Speaker 1: exploring course, just the darkness of human nature and you know,
Speaker 1: temptation to do evil and so forth, our attitudes towards others,
Speaker 1: and perhaps as well a little commentary on the idea
Speaker 1: that you still see in modern objections to say, the
Speaker 1: expansion of city rail, that oh well, if you do this,
Speaker 1: it's gonna allow criminals to just move around super easily.
Speaker 1: They'll just they'll just go right into the into the
Speaker 1: really nice parts of town and just start doing crimes.
Speaker 1: But and then on top of all of this, I
Speaker 1: feel like this there is also this sense of the
Speaker 1: train is a technology that shortens the distance between individuals.
Speaker 1: So it brings us closer together. But does it maybe
Speaker 1: bring us too close? You know? Is it does it
Speaker 1: just it just opens up the room for it breaks
Speaker 1: down barriers that should be in place, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, I'm gonna have to think on that. But in
Speaker 2: a minute, I do want to get into talking about
Speaker 2: some of the most common themes I feel like I've
Speaker 2: observed in train related horror stories, and so maybe this
Speaker 2: will come back up then. But before we do that,
Speaker 2: I know you wanted to mention a few more examples.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so these are gonna be a little more in passing,
Speaker 1: but I was just trying to list off a few
Speaker 1: in my head that stood out. The Midnight Meat Train
Speaker 1: by Clive Barker. If you're only familiar with the movie,
Speaker 1: let me just remind you that the original Books of
Speaker 1: Blood short story is quite good.
Speaker 2: It's one of those stories where, if this makes any sense,
Speaker 2: I kept expecting it to turn out to be less
Speaker 2: literal than it was, and like the literalness of the
Speaker 2: payoff is actually kind of genius.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think your words better in short story format.
Speaker 1: Another one is The Tall Grass by Joe R. Lansdale.
Speaker 1: This one was adapted on the Love and Robots television
Speaker 1: series the animated anthology series, and it's quite good. Involves
Speaker 1: a train sort of I forget if it breaks down
Speaker 1: or slows down, but it kind of gets into that
Speaker 1: area of like, oh, the train is something that connects
Speaker 1: point A to point B, but then what goes on
Speaker 1: in between and the idea that you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: often going through you know, very isolated countryside or you know,
Speaker 1: so it seems to the observer. Yeah, let's see getting
Speaker 1: into the realm of not only train horror fiction, but
Speaker 1: subway horror fiction, which we already got into a little
Speaker 1: bit of Midnight Me Train. There's an excellent older weird
Speaker 1: fiction tale called far Below by Robert Barbara Johnson, and
Speaker 1: this one is adapted into an okay episode of the
Speaker 1: anthology series Monsters, but the original short story is fabulous.
Speaker 1: It involves people becoming ghouls in the deep tunnels beneath
Speaker 1: New York City.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Let's see, Oh, we would have to we have to
Speaker 1: mention blame the monorail from King's The Dark Tower series,
Speaker 1: a like a super intelligent computer train that goes crazy.
Speaker 1: And I'd forgotten about this one, but a problematic horror master.
Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft, in describing the Shogoth at the end of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one's At the Mountains of Madness, compares this
Speaker 1: indescribable monster, you know, it's like this blob monster in
Speaker 1: part to a subway train. Okay, yeah, like there's not
Speaker 1: much you could compare it to but to a train,
Speaker 1: which maybe reveals something about some of the attitudes one
Speaker 1: might you know, have about trains or observe about them.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quick quote here, but we
Speaker 1: were not on a station platform. We were on the
Speaker 1: track ahead as the nightmare plastic column of fetid black
Speaker 1: herodestance ooze tightly onward through its fifteen foot sinus, gathering
Speaker 1: unholy speed, and driving before it a spiral re thickening
Speaker 1: cloud of the palette of this vapor. It was a terrible,
Speaker 1: indescribable thing. You just kind of described it, though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: vaster than any subway train.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, first of all, I do love that comparison. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I can picture that the monsters moving like a subway train. Also, yeah,
Speaker 2: this doesn't Lovecraft do this all the time. He says
Speaker 2: it's impossible to describe this, and then he describes it.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, yeah, I can't describe it, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to go on for about a good page telling you
Speaker 1: how impossible this is to describe.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like a way of saying, let me
Speaker 2: describe this, but just know that it's worse than whatever
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, And of course, there are just great train
Speaker 1: moments sprinkled throughout horror and even just horror flavored fiction.
Speaker 1: For instance, I mean there's the We've talked about the
Speaker 1: vampire action sequence with Subways and Blade on weird El
Speaker 1: Cinema before. Who can forget the arrival of the Dementors
Speaker 1: on Hogwarts Express in Alfonso Quran's Harry Potter and the
Speaker 1: Prisoner of Azkaban, which for my money is the best
Speaker 1: film in that that whole series, and a very creepy sequences.
Speaker 1: These wraiths are, you know, creeping aboard the train and
Speaker 1: the ice is forming over the glass and so forth.
Speaker 2: I only barely remember the moment you're talking about. Wait,
Speaker 2: do the the Dementitors get on the train and arrive
Speaker 2: by train or they're like surrounding a train.
Speaker 1: They're surrounding the train. Yeah, they didn't get it, they
Speaker 1: didn't buy a ticket, things about it. So at any rate,
Speaker 1: suffice to say, there are a lot of great horror
Speaker 1: and horror flavored train scenes in film and television, in
Speaker 1: fiction written fiction. So I'm sure there are some excellent
Speaker 1: examples that I haven't even thought to mention here. So
Speaker 1: as always, we'd love to hear from folks out there,
Speaker 1: if you have any examples that stand out in your
Speaker 1: mind and line up with some of the examples we're
Speaker 1: discussing here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely right in now, Rob, if you don't mind.
Speaker 2: I thought it would be interesting to try to look
Speaker 2: at what are some of the most common and distinctive
Speaker 2: themes of locomotive horror. What do train horror stories often
Speaker 2: get focused on as opposed to just the usual themes
Speaker 2: of horror. Here's what I could think of so far.
Speaker 2: First of all, I think a big theme of train
Speaker 2: horror is fate. These stories very often focus on people
Speaker 2: who have some kind of foreknowledge or premonition of horrible
Speaker 2: events or outcomes, but have no way to prevent them
Speaker 2: from happening. This is a core idea of the Dickens
Speaker 2: story The Signalman. But it happens in a lot of
Speaker 2: train fiction that you know something is going to happen,
Speaker 2: and you usually don't want it to happen, but you
Speaker 2: can't stop it. And I think this relates to unique features,
Speaker 2: especially in the nineteenth century, of trains as a transportation technology.
Speaker 2: When you're on a train, you are headed somewhere, and
Speaker 2: you've usually usually chosen to get on the train, but
Speaker 2: the travel is not occurring by your own physical power,
Speaker 2: and the train is not under your control to steer,
Speaker 2: and it is not within your practical power to get
Speaker 2: off the train. So once you're on a moving train,
Speaker 2: you are being taken ineluctably to the train's destination, and
Speaker 2: no matter how much you may want to, you cannot
Speaker 2: change course.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is indeed a great observation of horror train fiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even science fiction. You know, you get into even
Speaker 1: examples Like I keep thinking of snow Piercer, the TV series,
Speaker 1: in the film, and like what are they doing with trains?
Speaker 1: And they're doing a lot with trains thematically and with setting,
Speaker 1: but one of them kind of turning this concept on
Speaker 1: its head is that the train has no destination. It's
Speaker 1: just going endlessly around the world. There's like no destination
Speaker 1: left to go to because there's nothing left of human
Speaker 1: civilization except the journey of the train.
Speaker 2: But that has some metaphorical potency of its own, right,
Speaker 2: The idea of just a movement that never ceases with
Speaker 2: no endpoint or goal. Yeah, infinite games, right, Yeah. But
Speaker 2: also I was thinking about how the physical characteristics of
Speaker 2: locomotives and travel by rail feed into this theme of
Speaker 2: fate and unavoidable outcomes because trains are enormous and enormously
Speaker 2: powerful machines, which it would be you know, not only
Speaker 2: while if you're a passenger on a train, can you
Speaker 2: not steer the train yourself? You know, it's stuck to
Speaker 2: the tracks, It's going wherever the engine driver takes it.
Speaker 2: It would also be hopeless to personally resist the movement
Speaker 2: of the train. You know, you can't like push it
Speaker 2: or anything. It's overwhelming physical power. Also, travel by train
Speaker 2: is fast. You enter the belly of this great beast
Speaker 2: in one place, and then before you know it, you're
Speaker 2: just in another city, another part of the country, another
Speaker 2: part of the world, contributing to this sense of too quickness,
Speaker 2: like I have not had time to prepare for what's coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this this theme instantly makes me think of this
Speaker 1: particular reggae song I believe Bob Marley and the Whaler's
Speaker 1: covered it at one point, called stop that Train, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, the chorus is stop stop that train,
Speaker 1: I want to get off, and so forth, And like
Speaker 1: we instantly connect with this idea, like something is propelling
Speaker 1: me toward a destination and I've changed my mind about it,
Speaker 1: or I never wanted to go there to begin with.
Speaker 1: I would like to get off the train.
Speaker 2: Or maybe you just now understand what it means to
Speaker 2: go to this destination. You got on the train thinking
Speaker 2: one thing, and then you learn something it changes your mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's like the technology becomes the excellent metaphor
Speaker 1: for so many different aspects of human life, including life
Speaker 1: itself in our linear experience of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, okay. I think fate and fatalism, unavoidable outcomes,
Speaker 2: that's a big theme. Second theme I would say is
Speaker 2: very common in these stories is isolation and alienation. I
Speaker 2: think because you cannot safely exit a train in motion.
Speaker 2: Stories set on trains often emphasize themes of being cut
Speaker 2: off and isolated from the rest of the world, the
Speaker 2: world outside. So you can look out the windows of
Speaker 2: the train at the world as it goes by, but
Speaker 2: you can't interact with that world. You can only watch
Speaker 2: pieces of it quickly merge into and out of your view,
Speaker 2: and I think that creates this feeling of unreality and distance.
Speaker 2: This is sort of what I was getting at in
Speaker 2: response to that rant by Sherlock Holmes looking out at
Speaker 2: the world. I wonder if this feeling of unreality and
Speaker 2: alienation contributes to the malice that Home sees when looking
Speaker 2: out at houses through a passing train window. If he
Speaker 2: would feel any different if he were just standing on
Speaker 2: the ground looking at the same scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now beyond that more abstract feeling, the kind of uncanny
Speaker 2: separation of the train and its passengers from the outside world,
Speaker 2: there's a different type of isolation that often comes up
Speaker 2: in these stories, and it's much more practical individual isolation
Speaker 2: inclosed train compartments. In a lot of the nonfiction writings
Speaker 2: about trains from the nineteenth century, and we're going to
Speaker 2: get into some of these as the series goes on,
Speaker 2: you see a particular concern about people being by themselves
Speaker 2: and vulnerable to attacks in the privacy compartments of passenger trains. Now,
Speaker 2: I think this is interesting because obviously the train was
Speaker 2: not the first time there were ever rooms with walls
Speaker 2: and small spaces where people could become isolated and trapped,
Speaker 2: say with a dangerous person. But for some reason, compartments
Speaker 2: on trains seemed especially frightening to people in this regard.
Speaker 2: Like if you read newspaper articles from London in the
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties. People are writing about with terror about this
Speaker 2: idea of getting stock or cornered in a train car.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting to look at like why this environment
Speaker 2: in particular struck people as a place that was dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that is interesting to think about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to think of it as like the world
Speaker 1: has been squished down and elongated, and so all of
Speaker 1: those little confined spaces that you might encounter in the
Speaker 1: world are just maybe a little more confined or seem
Speaker 1: a little more confined because the world has been narrowed
Speaker 1: down into these uniform bricks of habitation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another theme, but I think pops up in these stories
Speaker 2: is train tunnels as journeys to the underworld, so passing
Speaker 2: through into darkness, literally traveling under the earth. This serves
Speaker 2: as metaphorical in the same way that journeys to the
Speaker 2: underworld often do in fiction, as a way of speaking
Speaker 2: about death often or great transitions and changes, and then
Speaker 2: speaking of change. One more theme. I think that is
Speaker 2: quite prominent, especially in stories from the nineteenth century. I
Speaker 2: think this is less true as time goes on, but
Speaker 2: in stories from the nineteenth century, when passenger trains were
Speaker 2: a more recent innovation. Trains often are used as the
Speaker 2: singular symbol of the technological era. So in the same
Speaker 2: way that if you wanted to write a story today
Speaker 2: commenting on the digital age, you might have as an
Speaker 2: object in that story, like a phone or a computer.
Speaker 2: That's like the icon of the technological environment. I think
Speaker 2: in the same way, the locomotive was the core physical
Speaker 2: symbol of the steam age and everything that came with it.
Speaker 2: So the replacement of human labor with machine power, changes
Speaker 2: to the physical landscape of the world, a pollution of
Speaker 2: the environment, the accelerating pace of human life, increasing power
Speaker 2: to both create and destroy. All these things I think
Speaker 2: were symbolized in the physical object of the train. The
Speaker 2: train could key out to all of those technological ideas,
Speaker 2: and I think for that reason, it's not hyperbole to
Speaker 2: say that somebody, especially in the nineteenth century, could easily
Speaker 2: look on the steam engine and the steam engine powered
Speaker 2: locomotive as something demonic, something unholy. It is humanities packed
Speaker 2: with the devil that has given us great power at
Speaker 2: the cost of our souls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think it's also worth keeping in
Speaker 1: mind that Again, no matter how every day and new
Speaker 1: and even old fashioned train transportation may seem to us today,
Speaker 1: we also have to look at the fact that, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of our fiction that we read today has,
Speaker 1: in one way or another, has sort of roots in
Speaker 1: the storytelling of this time period. You know, like you
Speaker 1: may not be setting around reading a bunch of Charles Dickens,
Speaker 1: but inevitably you're reading people that were inspired by people
Speaker 1: who are inspired by Dickens. Or Yeah, you can add, however,
Speaker 1: many layers of transition or and play there, but you
Speaker 1: can't deny, at least in the English language, the importance
Speaker 1: of these works. Likewise, when you look at film, like,
Speaker 1: trains have always been a part of the moving picture,
Speaker 1: and so you see cinema coming out of the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century still fascinated with trains and capturing trains, and
Speaker 1: we've never stopped being fascinated with trains in our visual
Speaker 1: cinematic storytelling. Yeah, all right, so we've alluded to some
Speaker 1: of the history here. I thought it would be a
Speaker 1: good idea just to run through rather quickly some of
Speaker 1: the big moments and development of locomotive technology. This is
Speaker 1: not going to be a full blown invention episode, so
Speaker 1: we're not going to go through everything in detail, and
Speaker 1: ultimately it's not just a hey, one day a guy
Speaker 1: invented a locomotive and they went with it. You know,
Speaker 1: there are a number of different people involved, different technologies
Speaker 1: that end up being utilized and built upon. But you know,
Speaker 1: to start with the basic concept of a wheeled vehicle
Speaker 1: on a set track sometimes called like a wagonway. This
Speaker 1: dates back as far as ancient Babylon wheeled carts affixed
Speaker 1: to some sort of rail, you know, to keep the
Speaker 1: cart on track, literally on track, like that's how how
Speaker 1: do you refer to it? The language has already embedded concept.
Speaker 1: But wheeled carts affixed to rails or of course have
Speaker 1: long been used in mining operations pulled by human or
Speaker 1: animal labor, well in advance of any kind of steam
Speaker 1: technology or electric like electronic technology, which would and this
Speaker 1: would have all would lay the groundwork for the locomotive
Speaker 1: revolution that's to come. And it's honestly kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to think about the connection between trains and mine cards
Speaker 1: here because mines, of course, as we've discussed in the
Speaker 1: show before, are also places with their own deep seated
Speaker 1: myths and legends. And definitely themes of traveling into the underworld.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say, overlapping themes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now. Steam technology also runs pretty deep in its basic conception, theorized,
Speaker 1: for instance, in the second half of the first century
Speaker 1: CE by Greek mathematician Hero sometimes called Heros or Heron.
Speaker 1: For centuries, however, steam technology was mostly the domain of
Speaker 1: theories and concepts, followed by experiments and novelties, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially little toys, leading up to a let's say, a
Speaker 1: seventeenth century pressure cooker, and then in sixteen ninety eight
Speaker 1: Thomas Savory's steam pump, the Miner's Friend. This was in
Speaker 1: vented as a way to use steam power to remove
Speaker 1: water from mines.
Speaker 2: To sort of pump them out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, it actually wasn't that successful in pumping water
Speaker 1: out of mines for a number of technological reasons and
Speaker 1: technological limitations at the time, but it pushed the technology forward.
Speaker 1: And there are various examples of this sort of thing
Speaker 1: in the development of steam technology. Leading up to the
Speaker 1: steam train, we get the newcoming engine, the Bolton and
Speaker 1: Watt engine, we get the Cornish engine, and each of
Speaker 1: these has its own story that we don't have time
Speaker 1: to get into here, and then at the same time
Speaker 1: there were plenty of other schemes to power a land
Speaker 1: vehicle with some sort of technology it steam or otherwise.
Speaker 1: So concepts and attempts at steam driven cars date back
Speaker 1: to the sixteen hundreds and French inventor Nicholas Joseph Kuno
Speaker 1: made the first steam powered vehicle in seventeen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: But then Richard Trevithek, one of the mines behind the
Speaker 1: Cornish Engine, took it to the next level with a
Speaker 1: steam powered engine design to take advantage of the pre
Speaker 1: existing iron enforced wooden rails called tramways, who were already
Speaker 1: used in industrial parts of England on which you had
Speaker 1: horses pulling carts full of sa coal. Two decades after this,
Speaker 1: British engineer George Stevenson advanced the concept and locomotion number
Speaker 1: one carried cargo and I believe six hundred passengers in
Speaker 1: a test run. And at this point there are various
Speaker 1: important figures in the UK, in the US and elsewhere
Speaker 1: who end up pushing the technology and the industry of
Speaker 1: trains forward, because it's kind of like a push and
Speaker 1: pull there, like you need the technology, but you also
Speaker 1: need the industry, you need the business savvy, you need
Speaker 1: applications of the technology, and so it's a it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating but also kind of ever expanding history at this point.
Speaker 1: But the way this ends up affecting the world is,
Speaker 1: of course, train tracks steadily began to stitch together major
Speaker 1: centers of population within a given country than a given nation,
Speaker 1: but then also between cities and neighboring nations, and they
Speaker 1: eventually seem to be encircling the earth kind of like
Speaker 1: that iron spider that was reference the Dickens.
Speaker 2: Quote, the great ground spiders that spun only iron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And they're also burrowing underneath the earth.
Speaker 1: We have to remember that the London underground parts of it,
Speaker 1: at any rate, the earliest parts of it began opening
Speaker 1: in like eighteen sixty three.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: So basically train technology, you know, spinning off of these
Speaker 1: other technologies. It ends up changing the way humans and
Speaker 1: goods traverse the world, just changing so many things about
Speaker 1: the shape of human life.
Speaker 2: And I think you can argue having ripple effects out
Speaker 2: through culture that are much bigger than just making it
Speaker 2: faster to get stuff and people from one place to another.
Speaker 2: I mean, one example we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 2: Is the way that train scheduled affected the cultural concept
Speaker 2: of time time. Yes, like trains, it's very important that
Speaker 2: you are operating on schedule. There can be danger if
Speaker 2: there are you know, miscommunications of time, even down to
Speaker 2: the to a matter of minutes. So like suddenly there
Speaker 2: is a necessity for exact measures of time that are
Speaker 2: you know, held throughout a place, and that that sort
Speaker 2: of changes everything in a way. Lots of stuff follows
Speaker 2: downstream from that, and there are other things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like the continuity of the rail itself
Speaker 1: stretching from from this big city to this small town
Speaker 1: like they are one now in the is as far
Speaker 1: as timing is concerned, I mean it always was, but
Speaker 1: you can no longer have just sort of local time,
Speaker 1: like yeah, it's you know here, it's like three thirty five. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're saying it's three thirty five here, it has
Speaker 1: to be three thirty five back in the city. These
Speaker 1: times absolutely have to match.
Speaker 2: Okay. So we've talked about the use of trains as
Speaker 2: a setting or plot device in weird fiction. We've talked
Speaker 2: about common themes attaching to locomotive horror themes like fate
Speaker 2: and helplessness, isolation and alienation. We talked a bit about
Speaker 2: the early steam locomotive models like George and Robert Stevenson's
Speaker 2: Locomotion Number One in the eighteen twenties, and then the
Speaker 2: emerging cultural impact of steam powered trains in the mid
Speaker 2: nineteenth century as they became more incorporated into everyday life
Speaker 2: within industrial societies. But with technological and cultural changes we
Speaker 2: know there often come anxieties. New technologies have not only
Speaker 2: a way of creating new fears and stresses, but also
Speaker 2: of exposing and tenderizing anxieties that existed before. So I
Speaker 2: wanted to talk briefly about what I think is a
Speaker 2: really interesting phenomenon, which we could call the Victorian railway
Speaker 2: madness panic. This was a particular journalistic and cultural obsession
Speaker 2: in Great Britain lasting between roughly eighteen sixty and eighteen eighty,
Speaker 2: in which it seems people were both fascinated with and
Speaker 2: horrified by the idea of being confined with violent, raving
Speaker 2: madmen on moving trains. So my main source on this
Speaker 2: subject is a historical article published in the Journal of
Speaker 2: Victorian Culture in twenty sixteen called Shattered Minds mad Men
Speaker 2: on the Railways eighteen sixty to eighteen eighty and this
Speaker 2: article is by a scholar named Amy Milne Smith, who
Speaker 2: is a professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University. Overall,
Speaker 2: it's a fascinating read, and I regret that we don't
Speaker 2: have time to get into all of the interesting details
Speaker 2: and arguments that the author brings up here. I'm going
Speaker 2: to mention some of the major points that stood out
Speaker 2: to me as relevant for our discussion today, but as possible,
Speaker 2: we'll come back to this page for a bit more
Speaker 2: in the next episode as well. So this article begins
Speaker 2: by highlighting another article, an article from eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: which is great because it's one of those social trend
Speaker 2: articles that we still get today, like a you know,
Speaker 2: five or ten years ago, it was like all the
Speaker 2: teens are reading tide pods. But this one is from
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty three and it's called a Madman on the
Speaker 2: rail published in the London Review. And so I looked
Speaker 2: this article up in full, actually, so I could see
Speaker 2: everything it says. I found a full scan of it
Speaker 2: on archive dot org and it is packed with interesting claims,
Speaker 2: but I have to mention the opening lines because the
Speaker 2: editors of the London Review really know how to grab you.
Speaker 2: They say, we demand that a bishop or Privy councilor
Speaker 2: be slaughtered in a railway carriage for the benefit of
Speaker 2: his country. Sidney Smith long ago made a similar demand
Speaker 2: that a dignitary of the church be burnt alive in
Speaker 2: a railway carriage which had spontaneously hot fire, for this
Speaker 2: is the only means of impressing railway directors with the
Speaker 2: propriety of affording travelers some means of communicating with the guard. Okay,
Speaker 2: so if I'm grading this as a first year persuasive essay,
Speaker 2: that might be coming on a little strong, but not bad.
Speaker 2: To begin by making it clear how serious you think
Speaker 2: an issue is that what's the problem that they say
Speaker 2: can only be solved by human sacrifice?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, threatening the clergy with ritual death seems a little strong.
Speaker 2: Yes, So here's the problem quote. Traveling express with madmen
Speaker 2: is unfortunately not an improbable circumstance of real life. And
Speaker 2: if there be any tendency to mania, the excitement of
Speaker 2: rapid transit through the air is the very thing to
Speaker 2: bring it on. So this article is not isolated. I
Speaker 2: think we could characterize this as part of a journalistic
Speaker 2: phenomenon of the eighteen sixties of newspaper and magazine articles
Speaker 2: really focusing on and highlighting the dangers of madmen on trains.
Speaker 2: And so this article by Amy Millan Smith explores a
Speaker 2: lot of that that cultural obsession, and it concerns two
Speaker 2: different nightmare train ride scenarios that sort of gripped the
Speaker 2: minds of the British public in these decades. So the
Speaker 2: first scenario is I think more plausible from our perspective today,
Speaker 2: and that scenario is violent madmen are getting on board
Speaker 2: trains and other passengers are trapped in the cars with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because this is an idea that has never completely
Speaker 1: gone away and still makes the headlines, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about the trains, particularly say New York subway. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's become it's a trope. It's a joke about the
Speaker 1: individual's misbehaving or posing a danger on an un given
Speaker 1: train car. And then likewise we see echoes of this
Speaker 1: with in aviation as well. Well yeah, yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: you know, to a certain extent or reality, but also
Speaker 1: something that is easily easily built up in the imagination
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, exactly, so there is no doubt there were
Speaker 2: cases in this time period where people were violently attacked
Speaker 2: by a stranger on a train. Of course, this can
Speaker 2: happen in pretty much any public place, and that the
Speaker 2: train is one place it does happen. And while I
Speaker 2: think a kind of vividness bias probably made this scenario
Speaker 2: seem more common than it actually was, you can't blame
Speaker 2: people for being alarmed. I mean, nobody would want to
Speaker 2: be trapped in a confined space with a person who's
Speaker 2: acting erratically and then becomes violent. That's a bad situation
Speaker 2: to be in. So you can't blame people for seeing
Speaker 2: that as a problem. But the issue seems to be
Speaker 2: that people came to believe, because of the reporting environment,
Speaker 2: that this was an extremely common problem, when in fact
Speaker 2: it probably was not. The second scenario described in this article, however,
Speaker 2: is more strained, intriguing certainly from our modern medical point
Speaker 2: of view, and that idea is that the act of
Speaker 2: riding on board a steam train could itself drive someone
Speaker 2: mad and send them shrieking and slashing at their fellow passengers.
Speaker 2: The author writes about this as a common medical expert
Speaker 2: sentiment of the eighteen sixties, saying, quote, doctors warned that
Speaker 2: intense vibrations of the railway carriage, the speed of travel,
Speaker 2: and the danger of traumatic accidents could unsettle both people's
Speaker 2: physical and mental health. So this led to not only
Speaker 2: the fear that you might be the victim of a
Speaker 2: railway madman, but that without any prior warning, you might
Speaker 2: become one yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, getting decided there's something about train travel that
Speaker 1: is inherently abnormal, and it can make you abnormal as well,
Speaker 1: or or enhance abnormal tendencies.
Speaker 2: Now. Milne Smith's charts the historical arc of this panic
Speaker 2: about railway madmen, saying that it sort of begins as
Speaker 2: a topic in the eighteen sixties, peaks in the eighteen seventies,
Speaker 2: and then pretty much completely disappears by later in the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century. It's sort of gone by the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 2: or the same kind of phenomenon when reported on in
Speaker 2: the later decades of the nineteenth century for some reason,
Speaker 2: or treated as kind of quaint instead of as terrifying.
Speaker 2: She also says that railway madness in this cultural context
Speaker 2: really meets all of the key criteria to be defined
Speaker 2: as a moral panic in the way academics would normally
Speaker 2: understand the term. So there's sort of a topical consensus
Speaker 2: of fear and apprehension about some apparent or alleged trend
Speaker 2: in society quote, drawing on latent fears and triggered by
Speaker 2: sensational events. And so she says that while the normal
Speaker 2: moral panic lasts maybe several months for a number of reasons,
Speaker 2: the railway madness panic lasted roughly two decades again, from
Speaker 2: about eighteen sixty to about eighteen eighty. And what made
Speaker 2: this especially potent was that it triggered at the same
Speaker 2: time anxieties about technological change, but also apparently some kind
Speaker 2: of gendered anxieties about failed masculinity, because she says, in
Speaker 2: the eighteen sixties in Britain there was generally increasing public
Speaker 2: consciousness of mental illness. There was a lot of talk
Speaker 2: in the press about what was at the time often
Speaker 2: referred to as lunacy and lunatics, and about perceived failures
Speaker 2: of the asylum system. And while this consciousness of mental illness,
Speaker 2: the author contends, was in general observed in both men
Speaker 2: and women with rough parody, for some reason, the railway
Speaker 2: travel induced madness was believed to be a distinctly male phenomenon.
Speaker 2: The railway mad men were, for some reason, specifically mad men.
Speaker 2: She also gets into some interesting things about the sensationalism
Speaker 2: demands of the press at the time. In the eighteen sixties,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of newspapers that were at the
Speaker 2: same time that they might look down on and have
Speaker 2: scathing editorials about the idea of the so called sensation
Speaker 2: novels in fiction, they were very happy to really ramp
Speaker 2: up the gory details and exaggerate anything about violent crime
Speaker 2: or mad men in the papers, and so there was
Speaker 2: there was a hunger in the British press in the
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties for stories about violent madmen, and especially if
Speaker 2: the circumstances of the story were strange, and apparently for
Speaker 2: some reason, people just really latched onto the setting of
Speaker 2: the railway train for this kind of story. So it
Speaker 2: was like, this is what the eighteen sixty equivalent of,
Speaker 2: this is what people are clicking on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And you could basically take anything and spin
Speaker 1: it out, because even if you a week goes by
Speaker 1: you don't have an actual madman attack on a train,
Speaker 1: perhaps you have something that could be played up as
Speaker 1: they brush with a train madman. You know, like some
Speaker 1: are amount of erratic behavior or reported erratic behavior or
Speaker 1: reported shiftiness that can then be blown up into a story.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly right, very perceptive role because she does
Speaker 2: get into exactly that that dynamic.
Speaker 4: I mean we're still doing it today, yes, yeah, And
Speaker 4: so like the way it is is there there are
Speaker 4: some initially very terrible events, like there was one very
Speaker 4: famous case of an actual murder on a train in
Speaker 4: Great Britain.
Speaker 2: It was in July eighteen sixty four. A London banker
Speaker 2: named Thomas Briggs was beaten and murdered inside of a
Speaker 2: locked train compartment. Eventually, a German tailor named Franz Mueller
Speaker 2: was convicted of the murder. I think it involved like
Speaker 2: a transatlantic pursuit of of the suspect, but what he
Speaker 2: was eventually convicted. So that was an actual, like terrifying
Speaker 2: violent crime on a train. But then you could spin
Speaker 2: that out into a lot of other scenarios where in
Speaker 2: many cases like nobody was actually even hurt, but they
Speaker 2: would just the press would put a lot of emphasis
Speaker 2: on something kind of weird and disturbing happened on a
Speaker 2: train and think of the danger that could have unfolded.
Speaker 2: So there's one example that the author cites in this
Speaker 2: paper of a story where there's an express train from
Speaker 2: King's Cross to Peterborough and a large sailor gets on board.
Speaker 2: The journey begins, and then the sailor begins behaving erradically,
Speaker 2: accusing his fellow passengers of stealing from him, and then
Speaker 2: at one point he tries to leap out of one
Speaker 2: of the windows of the moving train. Several other passengers
Speaker 2: prevent him from getting out of the window. They're able
Speaker 2: to restrain him until the train comes to a stop,
Speaker 2: and then authorities take over. And note how in the
Speaker 2: story there's no indication that anyone was actually badly hurt,
Speaker 2: but the press reporting just really emphasized the theme of
Speaker 2: madness and the threat that the sailor could have posed
Speaker 2: to the other passengers. There's another report she mentions that's
Speaker 2: in the Wrexham Advertiser in eighteen sixty Nine's the story
Speaker 2: of an aristocratic man from Falkirk who got onto a
Speaker 2: train and then took off all his clothes, leaned out
Speaker 2: the window and started talking nonsense. After the station master
Speaker 2: was alerted, they got him off the train, and then strangely,
Speaker 2: after they got him off the train, it reports that
Speaker 2: he seemed to come back to his senses, and this
Speaker 2: ties into the idea I mentioned a minute ago, the
Speaker 2: strange belief at the time that there was such a
Speaker 2: thing as sudden railway madness, so that essentially a man
Speaker 2: who was by all outward indications previously healthy could buy
Speaker 2: some mechanism of the movements and environment of the train
Speaker 2: be rendered instantly violently insane. And this was not considered
Speaker 2: a fringe or quack theory at the time. From what
Speaker 2: I can tell like, the idea was advanced by many
Speaker 2: physicians and in articles in some of the leading medical
Speaker 2: journals of the eighteen sixties. One example that Miln Smith
Speaker 2: sites is in eighteen sixty two, the medical journal The
Speaker 2: Lancet published a series of articles about the threats to
Speaker 2: public health posed by railway travel, and, as she summarizes
Speaker 2: as follows quote, the articles listed a number of potentially
Speaker 2: dangerous effects of railway travel on the unsuspecting passenger, ranging
Speaker 2: from fatigue to hemorrhoids to paralysis. A man suffering hemorrhoids Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe I don't know, but it goes on A man
Speaker 2: suffering from underlying mental anxieties or born with a predisposition
Speaker 2: to insanity, could have his illness triggered by the railway
Speaker 2: trip itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, this is one of those things
Speaker 1: where on one hand it seems outrageous, but then also,
Speaker 1: I mean there is some nugget of truth to the
Speaker 1: fact that travel can be stressful, sure, and can aggravate
Speaker 1: other you know, things going on in your your mental
Speaker 1: life or you know, your mental health. So yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's a line though, between you know, actual concern and
Speaker 1: something that just becomes a panic.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right. And then once again, as we said earlier,
Speaker 2: like in the cases where somebody is actually acting violently
Speaker 2: on a train, that's obviously a huge problem, but the
Speaker 2: the social panic around this seemed to vastly exaggerate the
Speaker 2: prevalence of the problem. There was this perception that it's
Speaker 2: happening all the time and it's just a persistent danger
Speaker 2: of riding the trains and something must be done about it.
Speaker 2: And yet another interesting thing Milan Smith gets into is
Speaker 2: the kind of difficulty in enacting any of the proposed
Speaker 2: solutions to this alleged problem. So the solutions included things
Speaker 2: like changes in the design of rail cars, because some
Speaker 2: passenger cars at the time would have a situation where
Speaker 2: like you'd be in a compartment or a carriage and
Speaker 2: you'd be essentially locked in from the outside with no
Speaker 2: way of traveling to like other parts of the train.
Speaker 2: If something you know bad was happening in your compartment
Speaker 2: or carriage and you wanted to go somewhere else, you
Speaker 2: couldn't really leave until the train came to a stop.
Speaker 2: So that's a possible solution. You could change the design
Speaker 2: of the train. You could add interior corridors and ways
Speaker 2: of getting back and forth. You could also add in
Speaker 2: ways to communicate with the train guard, so people in
Speaker 2: compartments could you know, could have like a like a
Speaker 2: cord or some kind of thing they could pull, or
Speaker 2: way of communicating with some kind of authority figure on
Speaker 2: the train. Or Another idea that would come about a
Speaker 2: good deal later was you could get emergency brake cords.
Speaker 2: People talked about adding in windows, interior windows to the
Speaker 2: train compartments so that you could signal for help, you
Speaker 2: could look at somebody else. But apparently a lot of
Speaker 2: these solutions took a long time to implement because they
Speaker 2: faced opposition, often on the grounds that they were violations
Speaker 2: of the privacy of the individual carriage or compartment. But
Speaker 2: the author argues that the social panic about railway madness
Speaker 2: went on because, in her opinion, it wasn't actually about
Speaker 2: the true practical question of safety on a train car.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's an element, but that's not the main thing.
Speaker 2: It was a way of expressing deeper anxieties that could
Speaker 2: not be fixed by a rail guard or a brake cord.
Speaker 2: She writes, quote the railway was a symbol of civilization,
Speaker 2: and yet it demonstrated how quickly civilization could fall away
Speaker 2: from modern man. So the underlying anxiety has to do,
Speaker 2: in her opinion, with a perceived fragility of the body
Speaker 2: and the mind, a fear that was sort of in
Speaker 2: the air in Victorian culture in Great Britain in the
Speaker 2: eighteen sixties and seventies, related to consciousness of mental illness,
Speaker 2: but then also spurred on by these popular stories about madmen,
Speaker 2: and the fear was that someone could go mad at
Speaker 2: any moment, even by the jostling of a train car.
Speaker 2: And so this sort of symbol of changes in the
Speaker 2: society around them, the technological environment of things happening faster
Speaker 2: than you can understand, and the pace of modern life
Speaker 2: changing and all this stuff coming on so fast, and
Speaker 2: that colliding with this idea of the fragility of our
Speaker 2: minds and bodies, and that leading to this fear that
Speaker 2: people could be changed in an instant. They're moving too
Speaker 2: fast through the air. The loud train car, the jostling
Speaker 2: back and forth of the train car, it sets them off.
Speaker 2: And now it could be someone in the train car
Speaker 2: with you, or it could be you yourself that now
Speaker 2: you are no longer in control.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And what you mentioned about this increasing awareness of
Speaker 1: or this view of one's mental state as being fragile,
Speaker 1: you do you see this reflected, you know, in the
Speaker 1: fiction of the time period as well. I can't help
Speaker 1: but think of at least of a couple a couple
Speaker 1: of cases, in the cases of Sherlock Holmes, where we
Speaker 1: see madness play of an important role, often affecting people
Speaker 1: of means, people of status.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: There's of course the case of the Creeping Man, and
Speaker 1: that one, of course involves some gorilla hijinks and his
Speaker 1: you know, borderline science fiction. But then there's the and
Speaker 1: there's the excellent case of the Devil's foot, which involves
Speaker 1: on the outset some sort of unknown occurrence or substance.
Speaker 1: It's unknown what actually happens that drives an entire room
Speaker 1: full of people either kills them dead or drives them insane.
Speaker 1: And at the beginning it seems like it could even
Speaker 1: have a supernatural cause. We don't know. But you know,
Speaker 1: both of these stories that there are stories that seemed
Speaker 1: to drive home this idea that was in the public
Speaker 1: consciousness that yeah, nobody is immune. Anybody can be affected
Speaker 1: by some sort of change in their mental state. Yes.
Speaker 2: And the prominence, the emerging prominence of railway travel in
Speaker 2: human life in the eighteen sixties. I mean again, remember
Speaker 2: how quickly railways became central to industrial societies in the
Speaker 2: mid nineteenth century. There was just an explosion in the
Speaker 2: number of railway lines and the number of passengers from
Speaker 2: like eighteen fifty to eighteen sixty in Great Britain. That
Speaker 2: came on so quick. I think that change in the
Speaker 2: world around them and in travel and infrastructure in human
Speaker 2: life probably created this feeling that one could change internally
Speaker 2: very quickly as well. So Rob, I think you said
Speaker 2: this earlier, but I think one could plausibly argue that
Speaker 2: there is a kind of Victorian era few shot going on,
Speaker 2: that all of this technological change coming on so fast
Speaker 2: and changing the character of human life so much, really
Speaker 2: does create in itself a kind of anxiety that people
Speaker 2: end up working out in these these horror stories and
Speaker 2: and in these sensational journalistic obsessions.
Speaker 1: Again, this is so fascinating, given how you know, every
Speaker 1: day train travel really is, and how at least from
Speaker 1: my vantage point, how pleasant it can be. Like even
Speaker 1: you know, I rode public transportation trains here in Atlanta
Speaker 1: for a long time, and you know, sometimes it's weird,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's startling, you know, but even in those cases,
Speaker 1: often found it kind of peaceful, you know, you used to. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: I guess you can probably get some sort of a
Speaker 1: wireless connection just about anywhere on most major train rides.
Speaker 1: But there was a while where when you were underground
Speaker 1: on the train, you were really I was completely cut
Speaker 1: off and there was nothing I could do on my phone,
Speaker 1: you know, I would just have to read. I got
Speaker 1: to read, uh, you know, I got to be sort
Speaker 1: of cut off from everything in a good way. And
Speaker 1: and that could happen no matter what the other conditions were,
Speaker 1: if there was somebody loud on the train, if the
Speaker 1: train was hot, if the train was maybe empty and spooky.
Speaker 1: You know, all that could could could play play into it.
Speaker 1: But it's it's fascinating to to look back on this
Speaker 1: time period where again there is something there's maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of Victorian future shot going on. There is
Speaker 1: also undeniably so many other things coming into play. We discussed,
Speaker 1: you know, awareness of sort of a growing but unbalanced
Speaker 1: awareness of mental health. I can't help but think about
Speaker 1: how how syphilis might have played into all this as well, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, awareness of how that can affect one's mental state.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There there is a fascinating topic. And then of course
Speaker 1: we see how it plays out, how it influences all
Speaker 1: of these various fictions h and a part of say
Speaker 1: railway fiction in general.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot more to talk about,
Speaker 2: and that's why we are not done with this topic.
Speaker 2: This was part one. We will be back with part
Speaker 2: two of our discussion of the locomotive Horror and Trains
Speaker 2: of Terror on Thursday of this week.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right, that's right. In the meantime, also recommend
Speaker 1: do yourself a favorite do a Google image search for
Speaker 1: some punch cartoons and throw train in there you'll see
Speaker 1: various examples of alleged Victorian train madness. I really wanted
Speaker 1: to see the one with the lady thinking she's looking
Speaker 1: at her own reflection, but it's actually somebody's face. Oh,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find out.
Speaker 2: I think this was a cartoon actually arguing against one
Speaker 2: of the safety innovations that was proposed on trains. So
Speaker 2: the idea was that you would put these windows in
Speaker 2: the compartments so that it would be easier to communicate
Speaker 2: back and forth or see what's going on. But then
Speaker 2: the idea is, oh, a lady's like, you know, dressing
Speaker 2: in front of the mirror and on the other side
Speaker 2: there's some kind of creep looking at.
Speaker 3: All.
Speaker 1: Right, well, we'll be back on Thursday. Then we'll get
Speaker 1: into ghost trains a bit in that one, so it
Speaker 1: should be a good time. But in the meantime we'll
Speaker 1: remind you that stuff to blow your mind. It is
Speaker 1: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays. We're of course very much in the
Speaker 1: Halloween spirit of things this month, so most of our
Speaker 1: topics are going to be a little bit creepy as intended.
Speaker 1: And then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 1: to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: And this week it is going to be train oriented,
Speaker 1: so we're excited for the tie in here we have trains.
Speaker 2: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Teleisivalis ooh boy, It's going to
Speaker 2: be a good time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 2: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
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